The game looks awesome, but the requirement of a internet connection is a deal-breaker. If and when people find a way to bypass that, I'll buy it once they stop patching it (I don't ever intend to play co-op or whatever the online options are for this game).

zzz wrote:The game looks awesome, but the requirement of a internet connection is a deal-breaker. If and when people find a way to bypass that, I'll buy it once they stop patching it (I don't ever intend to play co-op or whatever the online options are for this game).

Got my game all ready to go when the servers come up..got my collectors ed in the mail today, its an impressive box and lots of cool goodies in it. The only bad part will be waiting for midnight...pacific time, so 2 am here for me...but I am off the next day and plan to lay in a large supply of caffeine.

Is anyone West coast? Most people I know that will be playing D3 are in the midwest and by the time the kids are in bed it's pretty damn late in a general sense (at least for people that go into work kind of early).

Starfalcon wrote:Got my game all ready to go when the servers come up..got my collectors ed in the mail today, its an impressive box and lots of cool goodies in it. The only bad part will be waiting for midnight...pacific time, so 2 am here for me...but I am off the next day and plan to lay in a large supply of caffeine.

Wow already? Amazon sent me a email that mine has been shipped for release day delivery tomm.

tfp wrote:Is anyone West coast? Most people I know that will be playing D3 are in the midwest and by the time the kids are in bed it's pretty damn late in a general sense (at least for people that go into work kind of early).

zzz wrote:The game looks awesome, but the requirement of a internet connection is a deal-breaker. If and when people find a way to bypass that, I'll buy it once they stop patching it (I don't ever intend to play co-op or whatever the online options are for this game).

Same here, except that I may not actually buy it even at that point, just to avoid seeming to condone this sort of behavior. (Which isn't to say I'll pirate it; I probably just won't play it at all.)

Unfortunately, from what I hear, the way they've designed the game is such that "finding a way to bypass the online requirement" will probably never happen. Allegedly, they've set it up so that when you do single-player mode, you're actually connecting to another online "instance" of the game, just like any multiplayer session - with the added difference that it's restricted to just you, and no one else is allowed to connect to that same instance. Much of the functionality necessary for generating and handling the game's "levels" apparently isn't even present in the client itself at all. (This is also allegedly why they couldn't just split out single-player mode to not require an online connection, after the "surprise" discovery that people objected to it.)

In other words, to bypass that requirement, you'd probably need a fully functional private server implementation. While that may not be impossible or even completely impracticable (depending largely on just how much of the game lies in the server rather than the client), I certainly don't expect to see it any time soon - quite possibly not this decade.

Online requirement is annoying, but I actually think what they have done is for the best. Item duping and hacks were a big problem for d2, making loot drops server side should make the game more resilient against exploits of that type and help keep things legit. Also, the real money auction house is a better alternative to paying a monthly subscription in my opinion, you can actually be rewarded for your efforts if you spend a lot of time playing, and blizz gets some support through that too.

It would be nice to have LAN play, and no DRM and all that stuff. But its a reality these days, whether it's through Steam or whatever. I think that Blizz has made some pretty reasonable choices so far, and hopefully it all goes smoothly and is well supported into the future.

Starfalcon wrote:Got my game all ready to go when the servers come up..got my collectors ed in the mail today, its an impressive box and lots of cool goodies in it. The only bad part will be waiting for midnight...pacific time, so 2 am here for me...but I am off the next day and plan to lay in a large supply of caffeine.

Wow already? Amazon sent me a email that mine has been shipped for release day delivery tomm.

Yeah, I ordered mine from best buy online and got the slowest shipping I could. I figured since I got the free copy with my anual pass I wasn't in any hurry to get my collectors edition. Color me suprised when I got an email thursday saying it had shipped and was due monday.

Well looks like a server crash and burn, been trying to log in for an hour now lol....looks like blizz was nowhere near ready for the amount of people trying to play their game. I plan to keep trying and see if I can get in and play.

Starfalcon wrote:Well looks like a server crash and burn, been trying to log in for an hour now lol....looks like blizz was nowhere near ready for the amount of people trying to play their game. I plan to keep trying and see if I can get in and play.

I figured this would happen after the beta. I was surprised they didn't keep the beta going longer.

It took me an hour and a half before I finally got in, I figure that a lot of people just gave up and went to bed. I played for about 5 hours or so and got the skeleton king down on my barbarian before I was falling asleep in my chair. Wake up to play today and find its down for emergency maint now lol. Ive noticed a few things here and there that have changed, but it is mostly the same as the beta so far..looking forward to playing the new stuff and actually playing together with my guildies like we wanted to do last night but couldnt.

Starfalcon wrote:It took me an hour and a half before I finally got in, I figure that a lot of people just gave up and went to bed. I played for about 5 hours or so and got the skeleton king down on my barbarian before I was falling asleep in my chair. Wake up to play today and find its down for emergency maint now lol.

Hilarious. I did the exact same thing, down to the playing for 5 hours as a Barbarian and killing the skeleton king and waking up today about 30 mins after the announcement that it's down for maintenance. Are you stalking me??

I was watching some http://www.twitch.tv streams of people playing teh game (which, b.t.w, is a perfect way to "experience" the game without paying anything for it ) last night, lots of people had problem logging in and creating teh characters... Surprising that Blizzard didn't implement some kind of meaningful queue system for such case. They still continues to perform random "maintenance" to random servers because of huge amount of people trying to play.

Last edited by JohnC on Tue May 15, 2012 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Starfalcon wrote:Got my game all ready to go when the servers come up..got my collectors ed in the mail today, its an impressive box and lots of cool goodies in it. The only bad part will be waiting for midnight...pacific time, so 2 am here for me...but I am off the next day and plan to lay in a large supply of caffeine.

Starfalcon wrote:It took me an hour and a half before I finally got in, I figure that a lot of people just gave up and went to bed. I played for about 5 hours or so and got the skeleton king down on my barbarian before I was falling asleep in my chair. Wake up to play today and find its down for emergency maint now lol.

Hilarious. I did the exact same thing, down to the playing for 5 hours as a Barbarian and killing the skeleton king and waking up today about 30 mins after the announcement that it's down for maintenance. Are you stalking me??

I got logged in after about an hour of trying. Beat skeleton king in about an hour and fifteen minutes and then called it a night. Started hardcore this morning and now I'm onto the new stuff. About to finish Act 1.